Free This House of Grief: The Story of a Murder Trial by Helen Garner Page A

divorce
go, so to speak? Of course you have your disagreements and arguments, but the kids
have always been put first, and everything like that.’
    Pressed for details of the drop-off of the boys that afternoon, Farquharson complains
that his arm is sore. Give it a move, mate, says the cop. No, it really is sore,
there, just in one spot. He relates the Father’s Day arrival and the arrangement
to have tea in Geelong and visit Kmart in Belmont. On the road the little one, who
was only two and a half, fell asleep in his car seat. So father and sons sat a while
in the Kmart car park and listened to the footy on the radio. When the toddler stirred
they roused him and went up to Kentucky to eat. Farquharson always had to deliver
them back to their mother by 7.30, so, after a look around in Kmart and a quick stop
at his sister’s place in Mount Moriac, they got back on the road.
    He trails off. Courtis nudges him forward. ‘Just getting back to the crash. Was there
anyone else in the traffic, or…?’
    Again Farquharson’s voice firms up. ‘No. I can’t remember nothing.’ With growing
vehemence, his volume rising and falling with the drama of it, he tells the story
a second time: the coughing, the waking up in a lot of water, Jai in the front passenger
seat opening the door. He adds that, when he leaned across to slam Jai’s door, all
the kids were screaming. He tried to unbuckle Jai’s seatbelt and to get the other
two out of the back, but because Jai had opened the door, the car nosedived. ‘Just
a nightmare,’ he says. ‘I’m gettin’ distressed.’ His voice goes dull again, without
expression.
    This is the moment the officers choose to caution him. Yeah, he knows he doesn’t
have to say anything, and that anything he says could be given in evidence.
    They surge on. Did he go under the water at all? He falters. ‘Yeah, we sort of did,
as I—I tried to get up—thinking I was in foot-deep, to try and get round and open
the doors and drag ’em out. I’m getting really distressed.’ He sounds like a child
calling for respite in a game that is getting too much for him. A pause. Then, out
of a jumble of hospital white noise, his voice rises again.
    ‘But sir. Can I ask one question?’
    ‘You can ask any question you like.’
    ‘I’ve never been in trouble before. So what’s the likely scenario, for me?’ On the
word likely he gives a tiny, matey breath of a laugh.
    Startled, I glanced at the uniformed Courtis sitting behind the bar table. A document
dangled from his right hand. The stapled sheets were quivering.
    ‘Well, mate,’ says Courtis on the tape, his voice tuneful with surprise, ‘at this
stage all we know is that you’ve been in an accident, where you’ve driven off the
road, and your kids have been in the car.’
    Farquharson pushes it. ‘So what sort of scena—’
    Courtis cuts across him. He seems to be controlling himself. ‘Mate, it’s so early,
we’re not looking at you for doing anything wrong.’
    ‘It’s something I’ve got to live with for the rest of me life,’ protests Farquharson.
The stress he lays on the word life , the complex intonation he gives it, makes him
sound plaintive, even petulant—a person with a legitimate grievance that is not being
taken seriously. ‘What I’m trying to say, you can go through and check that I’ve
got no record—’
    Courtis picks up on his anxiety. ‘Is there anything you want to tell us?’
    ‘No! That’s exactly as it happened. I’ve got no reason to lie, or anything of that
nature.’
    His coughing fit, he says, must have been triggered by the car heater, which he had
turned on when the kids said they were cold. He has recently been off work for eight
days with this cough, one of those colds that linger on. Has he been smoking dope?
He gives a gasp of laughter: he doesn’t do that sort of thing! He’s a normal, average
guy, trying to make a living and do the best by his family—and look what he’s done
now.
    ‘Mate,